


Two of Us

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>One night, towards the end of the three weeks, the two of you go on a real date.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two of Us

**Author's Note:**

> We all know that Chuck dies at the end of the movie, right?
> 
> Also, this got written before I read the wikia bit about Mako having been the youngest and second-youngest Academy graduates, or that Chuck started piloting at sixteen.

1\. 

When you meet Mr. Hansen and his son Chuck, you have a little basic English. You know when people are asking you to get up and sit down; you know how to ask for the bathroom or Mr. Pentecost. Mr. Hansen also speaks some Japanese from from before he signed up for the Jaeger project, and when he comes over one Saturday afternoon, six pack of beer in his left hand and a pile of plans and paperwork in his right, he introduces you to the kid standing next to him.

_Ms. Mori,_ he says, solemnly, with an almost comedically thick accent, _this is my son Chuck._

You look at Chuck.

Chuck looks at you.

Fifteen minutes later, when the adults have just sat down with their first beers, you hit Chuck Hansen in the mouth, hard as you can. He grabs for you, and the two of you roll around on the living room floor, screaming like cats -- the adults come running out of the study and have to forcibly separate the two of you. Stacker has his hand on your shoulder, and Mr. Hansen has a fistful of Chuck’s shirt. Stacker looks at you, and you set your jaw. Mr. Hansen looks at his son, and Chuck wipes his bloody nose on the back of his hand, then sniffs to show exactly what he thinks of you,

Stacker has to hold you back when you lunge for Chuck again. 

You are nine months off from losing your parents, four months from the orphanage.

Chuck’s mother is three, maybe four months dead. 

2.

Here is the reason behind the first time that you and Chuck Hansen get into a punching match: he announced that he had lost his mother. You understood more than you could speak, so you didn’t have the words to say what you thought, but your face made a pretty good show: he still had a father, so what was he complaining about? Instead, Chuck took your expression to mean that you didn’t believe that his mother was dead. Ultimately, a difference in meaning, but not in function because after spending five months in an orphanage, desperate, waiting, hoping, praying that somebody, anybody hadn’t forgotten about you, you didn’t even think it was possible that Stacker Pentecost remembered you existed -- you took one look at Chuck Hansen’s screwed up face getting ready to complain, and you punched him in it.

Would the Mako Mori from before the orphanage have done that? No, you don’t think she would even have known how to throw a punch. You learned a few things there. Things changed. You changed. 

So here are the reasons behind next thirteen or fourteen times or eighteen times you and Chuck Hansen start hitting each other. Chuck really likes fighting. So do you. Chuck really likes winning. So do you. 

Also, Chuck hates that people, including his father, seem to like you better. 

3.

You’re seventeen; Chuck is seventeen. His father and your sensei are best friends and stationed at the Anchorage Shatterdome together: Anchorage is a small city, but merits its own Shatterdome on the basis of the Jaeger Academy on Kodiak Island and the Jaeger factories in the vicinity. 

One night, you are sitting in the town library on one of the journal terminals, pulling up geographical data for a self-study project when a fight starts up. You had earbuds on on, but took them out when the yelling started: you assumed Chuck started it, because he starts things just by opening his stupid mouth, but with your earbuds out, you’re begin to think otherwise, and after having looked at the people yelling with Chuck more closely, you’re — not sure. They’re townies, upset about the kaiju attack from a week before, and Chuck is actually staring down at the table, muscle jumping in his jaw, his face set in that sullen, righteous expression that always makes you itch to wipe it off, preferably by flipping him hard onto a practice mat, but failing that, with a hard strike to the face. 

" -- goddamn Jaeger pilots were worth anything, then this wouldn’t keep --"

There is the girl in the group. She looks over at you and sneers. 

"What’re you making faces about, slant-eyes?"

You consider the four of them. You consider Chuck, face red and flat with anger, and moving slowly, you stand up, so that they can see the Shatterdome ID clipped to your belt, the PPDC insignia on your shirt. The girl is still sneering at you, but you aren’t paying attention to her anymore. Instead, you’re looking at the redhead, who is the tallest, biggest kid in the group. Big shoulders, big long arms. All of them are taller them you; all of them are big and strong from working on the fishing boats in every kind of weather. 

On the other hand, you are small and hard, and now, Chuck is standing up, too, shoving two fingers into a guy’s chest and yelling into his face about the Pan-Pacific Defence Force being what keeps kaiju from shitting on his front yard, what part of Pan-Pacific did he not get. 

You punch right, sweep left; Mr. Hansen has to bail the pair of you out together. 

5.

You don’t have friends. You don’t want them; you don’t seek them out. When people try, you step aside and let their efforts pass over you. You’re friendly with Tendo, and you like Mr. Hansen, but there is always a divide: a separation. Part of it is on your side. Part of it has to do with the facts. You want to be a Jaeger pilot, and everything in your life is directed towards that. 

One June day in Anchorage, when you are eighteen, you walk up the hill behind the Shatterdome. The world is green, but it’s early enough in the year that the mosquitoes haven’t shown up yet. 

"Congratulations," you say to Chuck. "I heard about the posting."

He looks up, sees it’s you, then slides over a little on the rock where he is sitting, so that there is room for you. He ate lunch up here, and you see the balled-up brown bag, the canteen of water. You sit down next to him. 

"When do you leave for Sydney?" you ask. 

"Three weeks."

"The first Mark V," you say, and he smiles, broad and happy, with only a little teeth. When he sees you studying him, he flushes, a little embarrassed to be this happy, this obviously pleased about something, but he can’t stop smiling. You’re friendly with Tendo, and you like Mr. Hansen, but there is always a divide: a separation. You’ve barely seen Chuck in over a year; you can’t count the number of times you’ve hit him or that he’s hit you back. During the year he was off at the Jaeger Academy out on Kodiak Island, you missed him: when you went to the Academy, you assume he missed you, too. 

The blue sky is above, and the Shatterdome is below.

You lean over and kiss him. 

6.

You unbutton his shirt and loop your hands around his neck: you feel warm skin and dog tags under your hands. You straddle him and kiss him, and he kisses you back. He slides his hand underneath your shirt, laying his hand a couple inches above your waist. Every time you breathe, you can feel his hand there. He touches the dog-tags you wear underneath your clothes. Both of you are PPDC now, not just kids hanging around the Shatterdome, and you make out on the hillside for a long, long time — the sun sets late in Alaska in June. 

For the three weeks after that, the two of you are together. 

He sleeps in your bed at first, but it’s awkward for him to sneak out in the morning without running into Pentecost, so you start spending the night at his place. He makes fun of your cardigans; you point out that Australian football has incomprehensible, bizarre rules.

The two of you eat together in the canteen. Every day, the two of you go to the gym together and run laps on the track together. Every day, the two of you go to the Kwoon, scheduled time, written down on the sheet, and the first part of the hour is you keeping each other on his stances: the second half is freeform, with each of you trying to grind each other into the mat. Mr. Hansen shows up to a couple of them and yells advice during freeform; Stacker comes too, and from a distance, you hear him laughing with Mr. Hansen over something. It distracts you, and Chuck stops the hanbo maybe a quarter-inch from your right cheekbone. You snort and slide back three steps; he grins and rocks back onto his heels. At one point, you dye your hair, and Chuck has been talking a big game about going down on you while you wait for the color to set, but he gets a faceful of the smell and retreats out of the bathroom, gasping. 

Rationing is new, so there are still a few restaurants left. One night, towards the end of the three weeks, the two of you go on a real date. Chuck knows a grey-market place that serves good spaghetti, and he picks you up for it and everything: a Jeep into town, him in a civilian suit, you in a skirt and blouse and make-up. On the way back, he pulls the Jeep over and goes down on you right there, right then, with your left foot hanging over the side and your right leg over his shoulder. Afterwards, he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, whistles, and smiles when you start laughing. 

Later that night, though: you wake. You are sweating, shaking, unable to talk.

Chuck is awake, too, and when he sees that your eyes are open, he asks if you’re all right. You don’t say a word to him, so he asks if you want some water. When you open your mouth tot ake a breath, your teeth start chattering, so you shut your mouth and tighten your hands into fists, and after what feels like a long time of you just lying there and Chuck holding very still, Chuck rolls onto his side. He doesn’t start telling you about his own nightmares about kaiju — the long terrible ride to safety once his father found him, and the fact that his mother died slow. Kaiju or radiation? Radiation or kaiju? Nobody is entirely clear. 

Instead, Chuck talks to you about things he knows you like, things that have nothing to do with kaiju: the silly Japanese drama from a decade back that you’ve been showing him. Other restaurants in town. Dogs. He knows you have a soft spot for them, and eventually, once you’ve stopped shaking, he starts rubbing your upper arms while talking about a litter of sled dogs that he saw in town, playing in the new grass in a front yard. 

Eventually, you relax. You fall asleep. 

Three days later, his time in Anchorage is up. He is shipping out, and when you come in to say goodbye, he is packing. He looks up, heart in his eyes, and he asks you to come with him to Sydney. 

7\. 

You say no. 

Of course you say no. 

8.

Here is what you specifically say to Chuck: “I want to ride a Jaeger, and we’re not Drift-compatible.”

"Vengeance is like an open wound, Mako," Stacker says. 

9.

Chuck goes to Sydney with a copilot who was in his class at the Jaeger Academy, but they can’t Drift in the Jaeger: they were fine on the EEG and in simulations, but strapped into the Conn-Pod for Eureka Striker, they don’t connect. They find him another, but Chuck can’t Drift with that one either. He is running out of chances -- how long before PPDC has to assume it’s him and not the co-pilot, and you and Stacker are sitting at dinner together. He eats his meals in private, and once a week, the two of you eat together at a small, pull-out table in his quarters. 

You say to Stacker, quietly, in Japanese, What about Mr. Hansen?

"I’ve considered it," he says, and his eyes rest on you. 

10.

A year after Chuck goes out to Sydney, you are sitting you a living room, and the window behind you looks towards Sydney, and the famous bridge and opera house are just barely visible as a smudge in the distance. There is a bulldog puppy in your lap, drooling indiscriminately, with great enthusiasm, and Mr. Hansen is in the kitchen, cooking. He tells you that if the dog is being too disgusting for you, just set him back down on the floor. You laugh and rub Max behind the ears. 

Chuck comes through the door, then stops moving. You know he is looking at you, framed with the sky behind you, his dog in your lap, his father in the kitchen with the radio on. _Sensei_ had been in the bathroom down by the bedrooms, and he comes out and says a few words to Mr. Hansen, possibly about dinner, possibly a joke, possibly something else. Neither you nor Chuck say a word to each other, either then or throughout the entirety of the dinner that comes after.

11.

The last words you say to Chuck Hansen, the first words you have said directly to him in years, are “Stop. Now.” Your fists are up, and you are on the balls of your feet. You are ready to wipe that look off his face: in it, you see the nine year old child who was indignant that you didn’t believe his mother was dead, the seventeen year old boy who sat in jail for a night because someone called you a name.

Chuck Hansen is viscerally disappointed with you. 

12.

For you, Mako Mori, regret is not an open wound. Still, after the Breach is closed, your conscience pricks you: from time to time, you think of the man Chuck Hansen was when he died at twenty-one.

**Author's Note:**

> Hat-tip to furius and destronomics, who came up with all the good ideas for this. Like. All of them.


End file.
